Guide
Where to put an EV charging station
A practical guide to choosing EV charging locations in Australia — what actually predicts utilisation, which data you can get for free, and the siting mistakes that turn a working business case into a stranded asset.
Siting is the decision that decides the return
Charging hardware costs roughly the same wherever you put it. Revenue does not. Two identical DC chargers, one on a busy arterial next to a fast-food car park and one three kilometres away behind an office block, will produce completely different utilisation for the same capital. That asymmetry is the whole argument for taking site selection seriously: it is the one input you fully control before you spend anything, and it is close to irreversible afterwards.
Most site searches go wrong in the same way. Someone looks at a map of existing chargers, sees a cluster, and concludes the area is proven. It is — and it is also served. The sites worth finding are the ones where demand indicators are strong and coverage is not, which is a harder thing to see by eye and an easy thing to compute.
What actually predicts a good charging site
Five factors carry most of the signal, and they are not equally weighted:
- Dwell time match. The single most misunderstood factor. A charger is only useful if the time people already spend at the site is enough to deliver meaningful range. Match the speed to the stay, not to ambition.
- Proven passing or resident demand. Traffic counts for through-traffic sites; population, income and dwelling type for destination sites. Apartment- heavy suburbs matter disproportionately, because residents without driveways cannot charge at home.
- Competition within reach. Not just "is there a charger here", but how many are within the distance a driver will happily divert. Two chargers 800 m apart compete; two 8 km apart mostly do not.
- Grid capacity and connection cost. The factor most likely to kill an otherwise excellent site, and the one nobody checks early enough. Distance to adequate supply and whether the distributor demands an upgrade can dwarf the hardware cost.
- Access, visibility and parking. Left-turn-in access, signage sightlines, bay layout that doesn't block the car park, and lighting for night use. These decide whether a technically good site is a pleasant one, and pleasant sites get repeat use.
Match the charger to the dwell time
If there is one rule worth carrying out of this guide, it is this. Sites sort naturally into two families, and the charger type follows from which family the site is in.
| Typical stay | Site examples | Fits |
|---|---|---|
| 10–40 min | Highway stops, fuel & convenience, fast food, transit car parks | DC fast |
| 1–3 hrs | Shopping centres, supermarkets, gyms, cinemas, pubs | AC or mid-power DC |
| 4 hrs + | Hotels, workplaces, long-stay parking, residential | AC destination |
The expensive error runs in both directions: DC hardware at a hotel wastes capital on speed nobody needs, and an AC unit at a highway stop adds so little range in a coffee stop that drivers won't return.
The data you can get for free in Australia
Every input below is open, which is why a rigorous site assessment does not require buying a commercial dataset:
- State traffic counts (AADT) — published as open data by several states, though not all. Where a state publishes nothing, traffic has to be inferred rather than measured, and any honest analysis should say so.
- ABS census — population, median income, dwelling structure and vehicle ownership at fine geography.
- OpenStreetMap — venue locations and, critically, mapped car park geometry, which is what makes "does this business have somewhere to put a charger" answerable at scale.
- Open Charge Map — existing charger locations and connector types, for the competition layer.
Across the 12 Australian city catchments Cartolith currently scores, that combination identifies 92 charging blackspots against 18,231 candidate host venues and 912 existing chargers — roughly 5.0 chargers for every 100 venues that could plausibly host one.
How to test a specific location
- Map every existing charger within a realistic diversion radius, by connector type — not just count.
- Pull the traffic count for the adjacent road, or note honestly that none is published.
- Check the catchment's population, median income and apartment share.
- Establish the site's real dwell time from what the venue is, then pick the charger class.
- Ask the distributor for a capacity check at the address before anything else is committed.
- Walk the car park: access, bay count, sightlines, lighting, and where the cable would actually run.
Steps 1–3 are exactly what the free map on this site does for any Australian suburb, and step 5 is the one that most often changes the answer.
Five siting mistakes that recur
- Following the cluster. Building where chargers already are, because it looks validated.
- Ignoring dwell time. Choosing charger speed by budget or ambition instead of by how long people stay.
- Leaving the grid check last. Discovering the connection cost after the lease is signed.
- Trusting EV registration counts. They are recorded at the owner's home address, which tells you little about where those cars actually need charging.
- Treating one good site as a network. Rollouts need coverage logic across sites, not six repetitions of the same catchment.
Common questions
Where is the best place to put an EV charging station?
The best sites combine three things: passing or resident demand that is already proven, a dwell time that matches the charger speed, and no competing charger within easy reach. In practice that means destination venues with car parks — shopping centres, pubs, supermarkets, gyms and hotels — for AC charging, and high-traffic arterial or highway sites for DC fast charging. A location that scores well on traffic but has nowhere to wait will underperform a quieter site attached to a venue where people already spend 40 minutes.
How do I know if a location has enough EV demand?
Demand is estimated, not observed, because nobody publishes EV counts per suburb. The usable proxies are annual average daily traffic counts from state governments, ABS census data on income and vehicle ownership, dwelling type (apartment-heavy areas have less home charging and more public demand), and the density of venues that attract dwelling visitors. Cartolith combines these into a demand surface and then subtracts existing charger coverage to find the genuine gaps.
What is an EV charging blackspot?
A charging blackspot is an area where the demand indicators — traffic, population, income and nearby venues — all point to charger demand, but the nearest existing charger is far enough away that drivers there are underserved. It is the opposite of the mistake most site searches make, which is putting a charger where the other chargers already are because that location "looks proven".
How much does it cost to install an EV charging station in Australia?
There is no honest single figure. An AC destination charger on an existing switchboard with spare capacity is a small fraction of the cost of a DC fast charger that needs a new grid connection, and the grid connection is usually the item that decides the project. The variables that actually move the number are charger speed, distance from the site to adequate supply, whether the distributor requires a network upgrade, civil works across a car park, and make-good. Get a distributor capacity check before you get excited about a site — it is the cheapest way to kill a bad one.
Do I need to own the land to host an EV charger?
No. A large share of Australian charging is installed under host agreements, where a charge point operator funds and runs the hardware and the landowner provides the car park space, power access and, usually, a revenue share or fixed rent. That is why site selection often starts by identifying which businesses have suitable car parks in a demand gap, rather than by looking for land to buy.
Is an EV charging station a good investment in Australia?
It depends almost entirely on utilisation, and utilisation depends on siting. A charger in the right place with matched dwell time and no nearby competition can pay back; the same hardware a few kilometres away, next to three existing chargers, may not. Because the hardware cost is broadly fixed and the revenue is entirely location-dependent, site selection is the highest-leverage decision in the whole project — which is the reason this site exists.
AC or DC — which charger suits my site?
Match the charger to the dwell time your site already has. If visitors stay two hours or more (shopping centres, gyms, hotels, workplaces, pubs), AC destination charging is cheaper to install and fits naturally. If visitors stay 10 to 40 minutes (highway stops, fuel and convenience, fast food), DC is the only thing that delivers useful range in that window. Installing DC at a long-dwell site wastes capital; installing AC at a short-dwell site produces a charger nobody uses.
Test a location now, free
Search any Australian suburb to see its charging blackspots and the businesses with car parks that could host a charger, ranked against real traffic and demographic data.
Open the free map